Self Help [Hardcover]

For the retired and/or retiring, a personal exploration claiming to be a self-help manual, a poet's musings on the experience of no longer having much to do and being disinclined by shyness to join a book club. Life could become a summer afternoon, a slow swim in a warm lake. I could become another backyard roustabout, part of the greedy gang eying the vegetable garden. The larcenous woodchuck returns. We exchange a long gaze but he gives no clue of what to do next. The poems ponder various ways to adapt to unaccustomed leisure--napping, complaining, gardening, volunteering, and so on. Observing time's curious way of intermittently sprinting then lollygagging, and understanding more clearly every day that time doesn't exist anyway, the poet relishes moments, which are ... liable to be caught like a leaf in the eddy of a brook, lodged only long enough to look, and which become her subjects. With wry self-deprecating humor, Elizabeth Poreba shares a clear-eyed view of the latter part of life. She pursues a quest for understanding as she intertwines urban existence, religion, and the natural world in unexpected ways, for example, inserting a dog--a labrador--as the means of preventing the loss of Eden and describing a grandchild as 'my DNA cunningly packaged, his little cap covering potential crackpot notions.' --Katrinka Moore, Author of?Numa?and?Thief The speaker of these poems may be 'retired' from official service, but she is anything but retiring--the liveliness, the wry wit, the energy of these poems belie any protestations to the contrary. Whether focusing on the natural world, family, or our shared social environs, Poreba brings her crafty skills and sharp eye together with a consciousness of the spiritual element inherent in all experience. A delightful collection that bears re-reading to discover the depths beneath the poems' crystal-clear surfaces. --Amy Lemmon, Author of Saint Nobody The 'self' who helps us in Elizabeth Poreba's new book of poems lcÀ